Charlie Benante Says Anthrax Will Start Recording a New Album in Two Weeks
It’s been a minute since thrash legends Anthrax put out some new material, but that should all change next year. During a recent interview with Robert Cavuoto of Metal Rules (transcribed by Blabbermouth), Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante revealed that the band would be heading into the studio in the very near future.
“We’re actually going in two weeks to start recording the record. But it probably wouldn’t come out till ’24 anyway. But the good part about it is we are going in to start recording it. So that’s awesome.”
The last full-length studio effort the band put out was 2016’s For All Kings. Since then, the band’s been touring and putting out a string of live albums — oh and there was a pandemic mixed in there for good measure. In fact, it was that last issue of a global pandemic shutting everything down that Benante directly blames the delay for a new album on.
“If we didn’t get hit with this whole global pandemic thing, it would have been out probably two years ago, three years ago. But we all know what happened. But now, being that some of the songs were [written] before the pandemic hit, they’re old to me. So now there’s a bunch of new songs that kind of came in the mix. So that’s a good thing. You can never have enough… We’re still working on the older ones because we really like a lot of those.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard rumblings of new Anthrax material coming down the pipe. Benante’s gone on record in the past saying that Anthrax is working on new material between Mr. Bungle tours in the case of Scott Ian and Pantera gigs, as Benante plays drums in that project.
The band apparently has “11 musical arrangements” on deck, according to Ian. And while 11 songs sounds like a full album to me, I’m sure there’s tons of polishing needed before they can even commit to those songs showing up on the new album.
Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited at the prospect of new Anthrax tunes. While For All Kings wasn’t exactly the follow up to the masterful Worship Music I’d hoped, it was still a great record. Given all the time between releases, it’s going to be exciting to see what the seminal thrash outfit can cook up in 2023.
